Family Cord Blood Banking Vs Public Cord Blood Storage

Stem cells are a hot topic among the health care community, the authorities, also expecting parents across the country. The placenta and umbilical cord blood are all valuable sources of stem cells-and typically happen to be discarded as medical waste. This enables stem cells to replace different cells within the body which are abnormal, weakened, or destroyed by disease. Cord blood stem cell transplants have already been successfully performed over 10,000 patients having some 80 recognized diseases, such as leukemia and other cancers and other potentially life-threatening diseases and conditions and find more information.

A patient that receives a stem cell transplant using stem cells by a family member is known as the best treatment option for hematopoietic (blood-forming) reconstitution. In reality, a study at the New England Journal of Medicine showed the 1-year survival rate for patients treated with cord blood stem cells by a relative was 63 percent-compared with just 29 percent from unrelated donors, and that amount increases if the transplant recipient is using his or her own stem cells. Present-day data reflect those which were stored for fifteen years possess exactly the same ability as they did in the time of storage. Present research between storage of cells also indicates that the cells derived from cord blood are most likely to stay viable indefinitely. However, what should expecting parents consider when determining between family cord blood banking and general public donation of the newborn’s cord blood stem cells?

In family banks, parents cover the business to process and store exclusively for family use. The family owns the cord blood stem cells, which may be made instantly available to your family member should there be no necessity. Family banking attracts expecting parents that need the peace of mind of knowing that their newborn’s cord blood is going to be saved and instantly available should a family member want it to treat a potentially life-threatening disease or condition.

While most expecting parents contribute their newborns’ cord blood to public banks to assist people requiring a lifesaving stem cell transplant, they should be made aware in some public banks, the standards for storing collections are so strict that over half of all donations are discarded rather than made available to the general public. This is because stem cell experts and transplant physicians agree that lots of cord blood samples might be too small to be used in lifesaving stem cell transplants because they do not contain enough stem cells. With this concern, members of the medical community have started investigating other abundant sources of stem cells together with the understanding that patients with access to more stem cells could also have access to improved lifesaving treatments. This research has resulted in the breakthrough of discovering that placenta-derived stem cells, which have the capacity to turn into different types of cells, may be isolated in the placenta using a proprietary technologies so that they’d be available for possible lifesaving treatment applications. This is process is currently known by the medical community as Placenta-Cord banking.